A typical pillow is shaped as a substantially symmetrical rounded rectangular block or blob, with opposing top and bottom faces and interconnecting sides. Several universally desirable characteristics of a pillow have been its ability to be "fluffed up" and to be flipped over 180 degrees to expose the top or bottom face as desired.
Pillows have been disclosed with sound speakers located therein: in Halstead U.S. Pat. No. 2,512,641; in Majoros U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,450; in Pruitt U.S. Pat. No. 3,621,155; in Yeaple U.S. Pat. No. 4,038,499; and in Haynie U.S. Pat. No. 4,782,533. Moreover, Neal U.S. Pat. No. 1,712,158, Bounds U.S. Pat. No. 2,958,769, and Fry U.S. Pat. No. 4,862,533 each have both the sound speakers and the audio source held in the pillow structure.
Design factors have reduced the commercial attractiveness of these patented structures. For example, specialized components have been used for holding the speakers in place in the pillow, increasing the overall pillow cost because of added costs of such specialized components and the fabricating dies, molds or the like for making them. Specialized components also tend to complicate the inventory situation in making the sound pillows, particularly when making pillows of different sizes, such as the conventional Standard, Queen or King sizes.
Moreover, the type and orientation of the speakers may make the sound pillow usable only in a unidirectional manner, meaning that the pillow top can only be used as the pillow top, against which the user's head rests. Also, the pillow structures may be incapable of being fluffed up or contoured as desired, as the resilient pillow mass may be formed of a foam rubber material or the speaker holding means may be formed of a nonflexible framing material.
Lastly, the ease for fabricating the sound pillow and/or assembly time is critical, for holding the overall pillow cost down, even if and/or where specialized component means are needed and must be handled individually as separate fabricating steps.
My copending application for patent filed on Feb. 2, 1990 and having Ser. No. 07/473,867 and entitled STEREO SOUND PILLOW AND METHOD OF MAKING, now abandoned, disclosed an improved stereo sound pillow that corrected many of these mentioned drawbacks. The disclosed pillow had a resilient composite fiberous material formed of a vast plurality of separate strands, each strand being greatly elongated compared to its cross-section and randomly disposed and loosely packed relative to and against one another, and had a case surrounding this material and generally defining the overall pillow shape. Sound speakers were held suspended within the resilient material in spaced apart locations, by the interlocked cooperation of the speakers and their lead wires solely with the composite material. The disclosed method of locating and securing the speakers in place in the composite material included parting the material from one side edge along a central cavity, separating a band of separate strands adjacent the cavity, and looping each speaker and its lead wire around the band and through itself, to isolate that speaker relative to the band and loop.
While my invention provided an economical stereo sound pillow, one superior or comparable to the listed prior patents, it did require some individual assembly for increased fabrication costs.